


This is For Me

by sabaceanbabe



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:48:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/pseuds/sabaceanbabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>...this time, there was a choice and it was hers, not that of some nameless, faceless coward.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is For Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Grammarwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grammarwoman/gifts).



> I started this a couple of _years_ ago and it's been languishing on my flash drive ever since, until the wonderful [](http://grammarwoman.livejournal.com/profile)[**grammarwoman**](http://grammarwoman.livejournal.com/) said that she wouldn't mind being the excuse for me to finally finish it. Hopefully, since I've been writing in present tense for so long, I managed to keep this all in past tense. And I've never written VMars fic before, so I hope this does her justice. This is for you, Kim. Happy birthday! ♥

A little tipsy from the champagne Georgia smuggled out of her father’s liquor cabinet, Veronica slipped off her shoes and left them in the limo; she didn’t bother to shut the door behind her because she didn’t plan to be away from the others for very long. This was just something she had to do and she knew that Wallace, at least, would understand.

The breeze that blew in from the ocean raised goose bumps on her exposed skin, ruffling her hair and tickling at her cheeks and neck. The sand beneath her bare feet had released any heat stored from the day’s sunshine, replaced it with the coolness of the silvery moonlight.

Each step she took in the shifting sand drew her farther away from the limo, farther away from all the things that twisted and tore at her life, that had changed her from the girl she had once been. Echoes of laughter followed her toward the water, laughter not tainted by bitterness or irony. Logan’s and Duncan’s twining with her own, with Lilly’s.

_“That is just unacceptable,” Lilly announced, laughter mixed with mock outrage in her voice. “We’re going to have to do something about that, Veronica Mars.”_

Only a year ago. Three hundred sixty five days, give or take. That night they had been so unsuspecting of what was in store for them only a few short weeks away. The last night of their childhood, in a way. Veronica stopped where the sand became more smooth, densely packed by the weight of the waves that flowed up onto the beach. Only a year ago.

Only a lifetime.

_“You are…” Lilly paused as she rummaged around in Veronica’s closet, pulling out garments she deemed unworthy and tossing them aside. “You are red satin,” she announced, then slid a look at Veronica from the corner of her eye and grinned wickedly. “You are_ strapless _red satin.”_

Before she lost her nerve, Veronica reached up between her shoulder blades and tugged at the zipper of her dress; it wasn’t satin, which was far too expensive, but it was strapless and red. The cool air at Veronica’s back, redolent with the scent of saltwater and seaweed, felt like ghostly fingers parting the fabric as she stared out over the dark water that beckoned her, lit from above by the bright light of the full moon. She shimmied, drew the dress over her hips and hooked her thumbs into her lacy red panties. Stepping from the confinement of her clothes, Veronica couldn’t stop a smile, thinking of how Lilly would approve.

+++

Logan sat on the beach, an old wool blanket between him and the sand, and looked out over the water, trying not to think, doing his level best to make his mind a blank, to stop the memories that refused to be still. That damned video. He took a swig from the bottle in his hand. The cheap beer did little to still the chaos in his head, but he drank it anyway, finishing off the bottle and tossing it to join the other empties with a clink of glass on glass. A quick glance to the side told him he had two left. Cheap beer, the poor man’s champagne. Maybe when those were gone, he’d move on to cheap liquor, instead. The fake i.d. in his wallet should be up to the challenge; he’d certainly paid enough for it.

A movement to his left, a flash of red and pale gold caught his eye. She stopped on the beach, not close enough for him to make out any details, but he knew it was Veronica Mars. Maybe it was the way she stood as she stared out at the water, the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. Whatever. He just knew.

As he watched, she reached up and unzipped her dress, tugged it down, stepped out of it, and time seemed to stop. He no longer heard the susurrus of the waves crowding onto the sand, didn’t hear the sounds of the light traffic flowing through the parking lot and the PCH beyond it. The memories, the voices that had clamored for his attention since he’d started that damned video fell silent, all except one. And that particular voice was one he hadn’t heard so clearly in nearly a year.

_“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! I’ve never...” Eyes dancing with suppressed, or maybe not so suppressed, laughter, Veronica paused for dramatic effect and Logan could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she tried to think up something scandalous. “… gone skinny dipping.”_

Now as then, Logan’s mouth went dry. In his memories, it had been the thought of a naked Veronica Mars that had caused it; in the here and now, it was the sudden and unexpected reality as she ran down the beach. Moonlight danced over her pale skin, caught the splashes of water in a sparkling eruption that sprang up around her as she dashed into the ocean and, half a second later, dove under. She surfaced, a dark silhouette against the bright shimmer of the full moon as it broke up and reformed over and over on the water.

Before he had a chance to think about what he was doing, Logan stood. Shedding his own clothes, he left them in a heap on the blanket and, not caring what he was doing or why, he chased after Veronica.

+++

The slam of a car door followed Veronica as she pounded down the beach, splashed through the water, warm in comparison to the early-October air. She wondered if it was Wallace protecting her honor or Troy protecting himself from the potential wrath of her father if he ever found out they saw her strip, but it didn’t really matter which one or why. The shock of the water sliding along her skin, enveloping her body, closing over her head nearly took her breath away; her eyes stung and she tasted salt when she surfaced, gasping and laughing.

For once she was doing something for herself. Maybe she felt a little guilty at making the others wait for her, but not enough to swim to shore just yet. And when, a few seconds later, she spotted the taillights of the limo as it pulled away, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Maybe it was neither Wallace nor Troy who slammed the door, but Georgia instead; Veronica grinned at the thought.

Still, she might have watched to see which way or how far it went, had a shadow in the moon’s reflection not made her turn away from the beach. Someone swam toward her, someone who, she realized as he drew closer, was Logan-shaped. Instinctively, she pushed her toes against the sandy bottom, backing away into deeper water where she wouldn’t accidentally expose too much of herself.

Logan stopped a couple of feet away, head and shoulders bobbing above the surface as he synchronized his movements to hers. “Don’t you have a big dance to go to?” he asked, for all the world as if they were meeting in the hall by their lockers rather than naked and treading water in the Pacific ocean. And she was as sure that he wore nothing but the ever-present necklace as she was of her own name, or that being out here with him, alone and, well, naked, was a bad idea. Not because he might hurt her – even when he’d smashed out the headlights on her car, she’d never been afraid that he’d cause _her_ physical harm – but because the night and the water and the moonlight and the memories they both shared were too intimate. And because the weirdest things seemed to happen with the help of a full moon. Well, and alcohol.

But mostly because, once upon a time, they had been friends and whatever they were to each other now, she missed that.

“I took a little detour.” He raised a brow and gave her the patented Logan Echolls Smirk; she shrugged, although she was pretty sure the effect was lost in the treading of water, which was just as well, because _naked_. “And now I think I’ve lost my ride,” she added. Both their gazes slid shoreward.

“If your ride is that cheap rental, I don’t think it left.” He nodded his head toward the parking lot and its harsh lights, softened by distance and the ocean mist. “There’s a limo parked next to the Snack Shack.”

“Crap.” She couldn’t quite see it from where she bobbed, but that probably meant Wallace had realized what she was doing and gotten the limo driver to wait somewhere with less of a view; she’d half hoped Georgia had come out on top and made them leave her here, even if that would have meant finding another way home. She couldn’t care less about missing the dance.

“Really? Crap? And here I thought you were all atwitter over the whole Neptune social scene.” He was closer to her now, not quite inside her personal space. She should probably move away, head toward shore and her clothes and the “whole Neptune social scene.”

Instead of doing the sensible thing and swimming away, she drifted closer to him; she allowed herself a small and satisfied smile when his dark eyes widened in surprise at her invasion of his personal space. On impulse, her hands on his shoulders, she bobbed up in the water to whisper in his ear, “I’m afraid the Neptune social scene and I broke up a long time ago.”

She almost laughed at the audible intake of his breath as hers ghosted over his skin. The moonlight glittered in his eyes as she pushed back from him and started to swim toward shore, but his hand slid down her arm, his fingers closing on her wrist. He tugged and had they been on dry land, she would have come up hard against his chest; as it was, with the water just deep enough to be over Veronica’s head, they wound up in a tangle of limbs and she went under for a couple of seconds before pulling herself back up Logan’s body, surfacing with her face only inches from his, her arms around his shoulders.

Anchored as she was by his body, Veronica did the only thing she could do, under the circumstances, or at least that’s what she told herself later. Without any warning, she kissed him. She kissed him full on the mouth and, warning or not, Logan was ready for it, had maybe been thinking of kissing her had she not beaten him to it. His right hand came up to cradle the back of her head as his tongue swept past her lips, tasting of salt and of beer, his left arm tightened around her waist, pressing her body flush against his and they almost went under again, but neither of them really noticed.

Logan licked at the roof of Veronica’s mouth, at her teeth, sucked on her tongue and her lower lip, but when he tried to pull back, to catch her eye, she wouldn’t let him break the kiss. Instead, she slid her arms up around his neck and exerted pressure until he gave up trying to pull away, kissing her again with increasing urgency. His hand stroked from her waist down over her hip to cup her butt and, standing on her toes in the soft sand beneath the water, she wrapped her leg around his thigh, pressing her hip against his erection; he growled at the unexpected contact and she laughed, a little giddy at his reaction.

He bit her lip. “What’s so funny?” His voice was rough, breathless.

She shook her head, suddenly nervous. “Nothing,” she whispered into his mouth. “Kiss me, Logan.”

She slid up his torso, nipples grazing his chest and he leaned down, scraping his teeth lightly along the side of her neck, making her shiver. He sucked at her pulse point, whispered, “God, I want to fuck you,” his voice barely audible, his words just a little slurred, and when he pulled back again to look at her, she realized he hadn’t meant to say the words aloud at all. Meeting his gaze, seeing the lust and longing there, the confusion, but none of the cruelty she had almost become used to, everything Veronica knew shifted, skewed, became something else.

She’d already gone further with him than she ever had with Duncan, a thought that was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. Veronica knew Logan wasn’t a virgin, that he’d been with Lilly and, from what Lilly had told her, she hadn’t been his first. She knew that if she continued this, if she let things go where they seemed to be headed, everyone at Neptune High, student and faculty, might know about it come Monday morning, but somehow she didn’t think that would happen.

Once upon a time, Veronica had dreamed that her first time would be with someone she loved, someone who loved and cherished her in return. She’d dreamed that it would be Duncan and that it would be gentle and sweet and perfect, but those dreams had been torn from her in a drug-induced fog. There was no such thing as a fairy tale romance, not for her. But this time, there was a choice and it was hers, not that of some nameless, faceless coward.

She and Logan didn’t love each other, most of the time they didn’t even _like_ each other, but she trusted him, at least in this one instance, not to hurt her. They might tear each other apart again when they returned to the everyday reality of their screwed up lives, but here, tonight, insulated by the surf and the stars and the moonlight’s spell…

“Then do it,” she said, her eyes still locked on his.

“What?”

She bobbed up until she could nip at his lip. “Fuck me,” she breathed against his mouth.

Maybe it was a trick of the moonlight, but his eyes seemed to become even darker, glittering like black diamonds in his pale face. She shivered, but didn’t look away. And between one breath and the next, she was cradled in his arms as he pushed his way through the yielding water, slipping a little as his footsteps dug into the sand, but he never loosened his hold on Veronica.

Neither of them said another word. Veronica buried her face in the crook formed by his neck and shoulder, breathed in the faint sweetness of cologne lingering on his skin and mingling with the scent of salt water. Not thinking, only feeling, only wanting, she licked the hollow at the base of his throat, making him stumble in the uneven, ever-shifting sand, but he quickly caught himself and splashed his way up the beach.

Lurching the last few steps, he laid her on a blanket in the sand, its surface scratchy against her skin. _Still better than a bed of sand_ , she thought as Logan followed her down, caught himself on his hands to either side of her shoulders, one knee between her legs. He stared down at her for a few eternal seconds, his eyes traveling from her eyes to her mouth, her breasts as though he couldn’t quite believe she was really there. When he met her eyes again, there was a question there that she couldn’t find the words to answer, so instead of speaking, which always seemed to end badly for them anyway, she reached up and pulled him down to her, lifting her head to meet his mouth with hers.

Out of sight of snack shacks and waiting limos, they kissed, salt and wet heat and hunger. Logan seemed to want to devour her. He covered her body with his, leaving just enough space between them so that her hard nipples grazed his chest and drops of water broke cold against her skin, but then he moved again, trailing his mouth along her jaw, her throat, her collarbone before stopping to suck at first one nipple, then the other. The pressure of his mouth sent shockwaves through Veronica, making her toes curl as she arched into him, wanting more.

Trailing his tongue up her chest, the hollow at the base of her throat, her chin, stopping at her mouth, Logan finally kissed her again. They battled for dominance with their tongues until Logan slid a hand between them, stroked his thumb between her legs, making her gasp. He pulled back to look at her, whispered, “Veronica, are you sure?”

Not trusting her voice, Veronica nodded and reached up to pull him down for another kiss, but he shifted, reached over her head, and presented her with a hard male nipple right under her nose – okay, over her nose. Veronica tilted her head up and caught it between her teeth; a yielding pebble against the tip of her tongue, his nipple tasted of salt. Logan hissed, but didn’t pull away, still searching for something on the blanket past her head.

His hand flailed out one last time and landed on the pile of clothes at the corner of the blanket. He pulled something from a pocket and then slid back down Veronica’s body, pulling his nipple from between her teeth and catching her mouth again with his. Veronica slid her hands across his ribs, over his hips, his skin tacky with salt water as he tore open the condom he’d pulled from his jeans pocket. He shifted, rolled a little away from her to stretch the bit of latex over his erection. Without breaking their kiss, Veronica glanced down their bodies to watch, joined one of her hands with his in unrolling the condom then closing her fingers him, squeezing hard, something else she’d never done before.

He shifted again, his motion sharp, urgent, pushed her onto her back on the blanket in the sand, pressed a knee between her legs, overwhelming her with his mouth and body, his hands seemingly everywhere at once, making her shiver. Without conscious thought, Veronica spread her legs for him, splayed her hands over the small of his back as he pressed first one finger into her and then another, stretching her.

It wasn’t her first time, but that didn’t matter. Not then. Not with Logan. There wasn’t anything she wanted to remember from that night – _she needed to remember everything from that night_ – but this… This was hers. She tore her mouth from under his. “Now, Logan.” She bucked up into his hand. “Do it.”

“As you wish…” he murmured against her neck, nipping and sucking at the point of her jaw. And then he was driving into her and it hurt, but Veronica welcomed the burn. She thrust upward against him, forcing him deeper, pressed hard into his back as she brought her legs up around his hips and held on. About the time the burn faded, replaced by a growing heat that was more than just simple friction, that felt better and better with each stroke, Logan drove deep into Veronica and stiffened against her. A soft noise escaped his lips and she knew that, as far as he was concerned, it was over.

But then he surprised her. He dropped his forehead to rest on hers and reached one hand between them, pressed his thumb into her where he was still inside her. Stroked hard and fast until she was gasping as the waves broke over her. When she was finally capable of coherent thought again, she saw that Logan was watching her. He gave her a quick grin.

“Lilly always hated it when I left her hanging.”

Veronica blinked and then started to laugh.


End file.
